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Don't Step Into The Shoes Of The Pushy Sports Parent

A parent writes: My 9-year-old daughter is just starting to express an interest in playing sports. If she finds a sport she really likes should I encourage her to stick with that sport year-long so she can learn and develop at a quicker rate, or should I persuade her to play a variety of sports?

Sports offer children a variety of social and emotional building block experiences that go far beyond the scoreboard. Team membership can be a wonderful way to learn how mutual support, personal sacrifice, and group decision making interplay with competition. Likewise, athletics presents opportunities for kids to identify and pursue goals, build determination, and process the feelings associated with defeat and victory. All these ingredients pave the way for a well-rounded perspective on life, perhaps the greatest benefit of sports.

When young athletes become too narrowly focused upon the pursuit of excellence the opportunities for personal enrichment are curtailed. Sports becomes a means to an end, rather than an avenue for personality growth. Here are some tips to help parents coach life skills from the sidelines:

Explain to your child that sports offers "life lessons within a game." Following practice or competition, conduct a post game review that covers some of these lessons. For example, if your child views a coach as unfair or showing favoritism, praise them if they didn't openly air their objections. Point out the links to real life. Identify how group membership requires similar restraint and good judgment. Look for other instances where sports mirrors life, such as controversy over penalty calls (questioning authority), overly competitive teammates (ego driven behavior), or a coach's verbal mistreatment (improper use of power).

Don’t lose sight of the importance of losing. Parents who stress scoring and skill development may unwittingly send the message that winning is all that matters. Sports are a great platform to coach the ability to bounce back from disappointment in oneself or to show dignity in the face of defeat. "I'm just as proud of you when you lose with integrity as when you win with it," is one way to get the massage across.

At younger ages, provide and encourage broad exposure rather than single sport concentration. The benefits of this approach include greater opportunity to assimilate life lessons, ample time to sample different sports, and more likelihood that fun will be a large part of the experience. For example, a star player in one sport benefits when they participate in another where they might not be as gifted due to the humility and empathy they can develop. Likewise, sportsmanship requires experiences of winning and losing. Too narrow a concentration on one sport may skew the athletic experience and promote self-aggrandizement rather than sportsmanship.

When young children confine themselves to one sport it invites parent and self-imposed pressures that can decrease motivation and fun. The adult concept of staying "on top of one's game" may be experienced by a young athlete as "dad's pushing me so he can see me beat everyone else. "When sports become entangled with such parental pressure and narcissism, relationships suffer, fun is replaced by worry, and young athletes become tagged by coaches and teammates as being a "parent proxy." The outcome may be disastrous for a budding athlete: feelings of anger and resentment at mom or dad may be acted out by turning their back upon the very sport pushed by the parent.

Dr. Steven Richfield is a child psychologist in Plymouth Meeting, PA. He has developed a child-friendly self-control/social skills building program called Parent Coaching Cards. His new book, The Parent Coach: A New Approach To Parenting In Today’s Society is available through Sopris West (sopriswest.com or 1-800-547-6747) He can be contacted at www.parentcoachcards.com or 610-238-4450